oking man, rose up from bending over the table.

"Never saw anything like it," he was saying to another man. "The whole
back of the skull."

Her lips were hot and dry, and there was an intolerable ache in her
throat. But why didn't she cry? She ought to cry; she felt it incumbent
upon her. There was Lottie (there had been another change in the dream),
across the little narrow cot from her, and she was crying. Somebody was
saying something about the coma of death. It was not the foreign-looking
doctor, but somebody else. It did not matter who it was. What time was
it? As if in answer, she saw the faint white light of dawn on the
windows.

"I was going to be married to-day," she said to Lottie.

And from across the cot his sister wailed, "Don't, don't!" and, covering
her face, sobbed afresh.

This, then, was the end of it all--of the carpets, and furniture, and the
little rented house; of the meetings and walking out, the thrilling
nights of starshine, the deliciousness of surrender, the loving and the
being loved. She was stunned by the awful facts of this Game she did not
understand--the grip it laid on men's souls, its irony and faithlessness,
its risks and hazards and fierce insurgences of the blood, making woman
pitiful, not the be-all and end-all of man, but his toy and his pastime;
to woman his mothering and caretaking, his moods and his moments, but to
the Game his days and nights of striving, the tribute of his head and
hand, his most patient toil and wildest effort, all the strain and the
stress of his being--to the Game, his heart's desire.

Silverstein was helping her to her feet. She obeyed blindly, the daze of
the dream still on her. His hand grasped her arm and he was turning her
toward the door.

"Oh, why don't you kiss him?" Lottie cried out, her dark eyes mournful
and passionate.

Genevieve stooped obediently over the quiet clay and pressed her lips to
the lips yet warm. The door opened and she passed into another room.
There stood Mrs. Silverstein, with angry eyes that snapped vindictively
at sight of her boy's clothes.

Silverstein looked beseechingly at his spouse, but she burst forth
savagely:--

"Vot did I tell you, eh? Vot did I tell you? You vood haf a bruiser for
your steady! An' now your name vill be in all der papers! At a prize
fight--vit boy's clothes on! You liddle strumpet! You hussy! You--"

But a flood of tears welled into her eyes and voice, and with her